When it comes to the government and drugs policy it is a case of "Hear no evil, see no evil, just speak evil". Perhaps evil is too strong a word but the previous Labour government tackled drugs policy by first shooting the messenger and then threatening his colleagues and successors. With its proposals to amend the law to remove a requirement to have effective science advice on drugs, this government is in danger of simply abandoning sensible inward communication.

These clauses and the schedule amend the historic 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. This was a very forward-thinking piece of legislation that required the government, when banning a drug and criminalising potentially large numbers of people, to do so after having sought and received expert (including scientific) advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs.

Clause 150 proposes to remove all references in the 1971 Act to the inclusion of particular expertise on the ACMD. It proposes to remove the words:

and shall include –(a) in relation to each of the activities specified in sub-paragraph (2) below, at least one person appearing to the Secretary of State to have wide and recent experience of that activity; and(b) persons appearing to the Secretary of State to have wide and recent experience of social problems connected with the misuse of drugs.

(2) The activities referred to in sub-paragraph (1)(a) above are—(a) the practice of medicine (other than veterinary medicine);(b) the practice of dentistry;(c) the practice of veterinary medicine;(d) the practice of pharmacy;(e) the pharmaceutical industry;(f) chemistry other than pharmaceutical chemistry.

And just leave:

"The ACMD ... shall be appointed by the Home Secretary after consultation with such organisations as he considers appropriate."

It may well be that the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act should be amended to provide for more flexibility in the particular expertise of the scientists appointed to the ACMD. In fact the committee – which is now a shadow of its former self in terms of sturdiness in the face of government pressure – may have agreed this, but:

a) it should have been the subject of consultation with the science and drug policy and treatment community;b) it should not involve the total removal on the stipulation of a minimum number of scientists on the ACMD nor for that matter a minimum of two experts on the social problems of drugs on the ACMD.

"The Committee will also wish to be aware that we are considering how best we can facilitate the ACMD's working practices and its ability to give advice to tight timescales. We are consulting the ACMD and wider science community."

If this referred to these changes in the statutory membership, none of the scientists I know have seen this consultation.

The crime prevention minister James Brokenshire, on behalf of the government, has today said:

"Scientific advice is absolutely critical to the government's approach to drugs and any suggestion that we are moving away from it is absolutely not true.

"Removing the requirement on the home secretary to appoint to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs at least one person with experience in six specific areas will allow us greater flexibility in the expertise we are able to draw on.

"We want the ACMD to be adapted to best address the challenges posed by the accelerating pace of challenges in the drugs landscape."

Assurances from this government about its intentions are not good enough. The 1971 Act was passed to require future governments to use scientific evidence to inform their policy when passing primary legislation.

And of course on a committee of at least 20 people the government could have maintained a statutory minimum scientist component while retaining flexibility as to the expertise required.

However, Clause 150 of the Police Reform and Public Responsibility Bill would remove the minimum number of scientists from legislation. This is wrong. Clause 150 should be amended to specify a minimum number of clinicians, scientists and social scientists.

Whatever the merits might be of the government's unamended proposal, it is simply bad politics to take an action that would make the scientific community and the wider public think that it was trying to downgrade scientific advice.

The Labour government accepted a watered-down version of those principles, but the coalition now seems to want to bypass them altogether by dispensing with the requirement to have scientists advising them at all. At a time when there is concern that a number of quangos that are advisory committees are being taken "in house" – into government departments – this tends to add to a climate of suspicion.

The government can easily accept amendments to this proposal and reinstate the statutory minimum of scientific presence on the ACMD.

Evan Harris: Parliament has reacted to yesterday's news that the government plans to remove the legal requirement that the ACMD (Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs) contains scientists and experts